"Should we take them?" He looks to Sweeper for confirmation or warning.
Sweeper shrugs. "I don't know who owns it, maybe you can take it, finder's keeper, they say. Or is it keeper's find?"
----
Seamless carefully listens to their retort. He silently nods at Rybar's argument. "I agree, but I keep the magic to hold the dollhouse." he says though his words are unconvincing even to himself.
"Well, I can check them later," there is worry in his voice after Moist confirms that the house is breaking down.
"We can fix it here, thanks." he dismisses Zepth's idea of going out.
"I don't know what you are talking about." he responds to Olegaro after sniffing the air in the room and finds nothing unusual about it.
Seamless has his eyes wide open when he mentions fire. He looks up at where the tengu is pointing at and coincidentally, a panel on the ceiling falls to the ground with a thud. "Alright, the ceiling needs fixing, I'll take care of that. But no joking about fire!"
He dismisses Hanu, "The house is safe, I can tell you that."
And another panel from the ceiling falls to the ground.
"Alright, alright!" Seamless concedes. "Well, it is hard to maintain this place for a long time, I am kinda tired of maintaining it. Might as well join everyone here to get out. Happy now?"
Sweeper squeals in happiness and gives Seamless a hug.
"Well done, friends! We have everyone convinced and we can tell the Warden that we all want to get out here. Quick, let's go to the Warden office!" she says excitedly.
Rybar - Fail (+0)
Hanu - Success (+1)
Otani - Success (+1)
Olegaro - Success (+1)
Zepth - ???
Moist - Success (+1)
Total Cooperation Points: 4
For Basil
Otani - Success (+1)
Moist - Crit Success (+2)
Rybar - Success (+1)
Hanu - Failure (+0)
Zepth - Failure (+0)
Olegaro - Failure (+0)
Total Cooperation Points: 4
For Full-Plate:
Olegaro - Failure (+0)
Rybar - Success (+1)
Hanu - Success (+1)
Otani - Failure (+0)
Moist - Failure (+0)
Zepth - Success (+1)
Total Cooperation Points: 3
For Seamless:
Rybar - Success (+1)
Moist - Success (+1)
Zepth - Failure (+0)
Olegaro - Failure (+0)
Otani - Success (+1)
Hanu - Failure (+0)
Total Cooperation Points: 3
TOTAL SO FAR: 14
Sweeper motions everyone to follow her once again. They lead them into the display room. Miniaturized statues of dinosaurs, winter wolves, dire bears, and other large predators from the land of Irrisen are displayed here. They are each in menacing poses, fierce snarls of teeth and claws protruding at any visitors. What might have once been an impressive display is now rundown and pitiful. A century of dust and cobwebs has matted fur and clogged open maws. Painted eyes have dulled and peeled to make them look comical and lifeless. This once grand display room is now indicative of the failure of this former prison.
"They used to be scary, I refused to clean them, but now they just feel sad." Sweeper tells them as they go past the displays.
They then climb the stairs south of this room and arrive in front of the Warden's office. The door is locked.
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Looking at the statues, Olegaro will comment "They do look sad Sweeper. They've seen better days, much like the rest of this dollhouse. We'll get you out, we'll convince the Warden."
---
and then once they reach the locked door "Does anyone have a less violent approach than shouldering the door down? I could do it like the last one, but it isn't generally considered polite..."
Not wanting to force open a door, the group agrees to knock instead. After a few moment of insistent knocking, they can hear somebody approaching.
"How dare they knock from work and disturb me?" they hear in a muffled voice. Moments later, the door finally opens and a doll wearing
a fine silk dress and a coronet of ice reveals herself. “What chaos have you brought to my beautiful house?" She scowls when she sees them when she sees the Pathfinders and her staff joining them.
"Why do you intrude here, turning my staff against me on your half-baked mission?" she exclaims, as if she knows why they are in front of her. She then turns to Sweeper. "And you, Sweeper, is this some scheme of yours? You never did know your place. Explain yourselves and do it quickly before I have you replace our missing prisoners.”
Seeing their number and realizing they are far too many against her, The Warden collapses in a heap of tears.
"I feel useless!" she cries. "With no prisoners, I have nothing to do. Even the staff does not want to stay with me." she continues.
"If you all want to leave, just leave now! I'll just stay here." The invisible wall briefly becomes a visible, translucent barrier before shattering and vanishing completely. The Warden’s willpower was the only thing holding the remaining wards together.
She says no more, waving off any further questions between sobs.
When the party and the poppet residents of the dollhouse step out, the curse is broken, and the Pathfinders are returned to normal size. For many of the poppets, this may be a bit unsettling as it is their first time ever out of the dollhouse. It takes a few minutes for them to collect themselves, but they are hopeful and follow the pathfinders to meet Eando Kline.
Eando is incredibly surprised to see the Pathfinder accompanied by their new allies, and over the coming days, he speaks to each of the poppets. Now free and truly awake, the poppets eventually seek new purpose, perhaps with a little prompting from the Pathfinders; they remember the conversations of places to go and jobs to be had in the wide world of Golarion. One by one, they leave to find their way, or they join the Society and find roles fit for them.
The last one to leave is Sweeper. She doesn’t wish to continue being a janitor. What’s more, she’s found that, between her strange awakening within the vaults and her presence at the shattering of the old wards, she has an understanding of how to spread this to other dollhouse prisons. She wants to help in a more meaningful manner after Eando Kline informs her of the other dollhouses that Queen Anastasia has in her possession. Sweeper perks up and offers to go help free any other poppets who are still imprisoned, or otherwise help to take care of the dollhouses. She accepts a field commission as a Pathfinder agent and liaison to Irrisen. There are sure to be more poppets joining the Society’s ranks if Sweeper has anything to say on the matter.
No matter how much training a Pathfinder initiate receives, they can’t attain full agent status without completing their Confirmation—a final test of skill, resourcefulness, and dedication typically undertaken within 3 years of joining the Society. Every Confirmation is different, so once an initiate is ready, they petition one of the Society’s three masters to act as a sponsor and help develop a suitable challenge. A typical Confirmation fulfills multiple criteria. First, the mission ideally requires the agent to travel beyond the city of Absalom; the initiate is responsible for arranging their own transportation and provisioning. Second, the objective involves working with one or more Society contacts—or in some cases making entirely new contacts. Third, the Confirmation involves acquiring something of historical or cultural note. Nearly anything could qualify: the secrets of a political movement, an ancient relic sealed within a dusty tomb, an understanding of a lost archaeological site, an innovative translation of an obscure text, the preservation of a dying martial art, or countless other possibilities that expand the world’s knowledge. However, the Society strongly encourages acquisitions that the initiate can perform ethically, not by exploiting living populations or despoiling the past. Finally, the initiate must return to the Grand Lodge with a suitable write-up of the discoveries for review by their sponsor or other highly regarded Pathfinders. The Confirmation serves as a first adventure for most field agents, demanding many of the key skills and best practices expected of a Pathfinder.
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The adventure begins with the agents assembled at the Grand Lodge of the Pathfinder Society in the great city of Absalom. The Pathfinder Society is a fellowship of adventurers who maintain a global operation of explorers, historians, and thrillseekers that number in the thousands, with thousands more in support staff. The title of Pathfinder is known across the breadth of the world of Golarion, and none know of the Society’s exploits more than the citizens of Absalom, the so-called City at the Center of the World. Inside the Grand Lodge’s central hub structure of Skyreach, the agents wait to meet with the three deans of the Pathfinder Society in one of the lodge’s many meeting chambers.
Three individuals enter the spacious meeting room. A male elf, garbed in fine red robes with gold embroidery enters first. The second to enter is a woman with white hair and a cluster of multicolored gems orbiting her head, laden with books. Finally, a bald human male with a bushy beard smiles widely and then curses to himself as the array of weapons along his back get stuck in the doorframe.
Kreighton takes the empty seat at the head of the table, while Sorrina takes an adjacent seat to his side. Marcos half-jogs to join his colleagues, but after a few seconds of awkwardly trying to seat himself and his panoply of back-mounted weapons, he pushes his chair in and stands behind it with a wide, if apologetic, grin.
“Regrets for the sudden nature of this meeting. I’ll try to be brief.” Kreighton begins. “One of our most enthusiastic Pathfinder initiates, a fungus leshy by the name of Rain in Cloudy Day, was recently approved for his Confirmation. In case you’ve forgotten, a Confirmation is a mission we send initiates on as a final test before recognizing them as full field agents. It was a mission to the nearby nation of Taldor to search for some ruins in a swamp near the city of Cassomir. Standard fare for a Pathfinder mission, but Rain hasn’t reported back, and it’s been a week since his expected check-in.”
Sorrina Westyr extends a hand. “This is where you come in. Even though Rain in Cloudy Day is still an initiate, the Pathfinder Society doesn’t leave its own behind. Us three masters have agreed that a special exception is necessary. For those of you who haven’t finished your own Confirmation, we’re willing to offer each of you a place in a group Confirmation. We’ll provide a stipend of gold for you to book your passage to Cassomir, and from there, you’ll need to find out what happened to Rain.”
The Master of Swords, Marcos Farabellus, chimes in with a chuckle. “Exactly what my associates have just said. Find a boat, head to Cassomir, enjoy a bit of the city’s livelier elements, and then head into the swamps to find our missing initiate. Of course, if you find little Rain alive and well... then you can really prove yourselves by helping him discover those ruins and finish his own Confirmation!”
"Do you have questions?"
Why did he go into the swamp alone? Shouldn't he be in a group like ours? Safety in numbers!
Kreighton answers Moist. "Confirmation ideally resembles a thesis that initiates must work on independently before becoming full-fledged Pathfinder agents. Usually, they collaborate with one or more of the Society's contacts. In Rain's case, that contact is me. Rain came up with a Confirmation that appealed to his talents: exploring the Blackwood Swamp and cataloguing any possibility of some ancient settlement hidden within the morass."
"Rain uncovered evidence of ruins in Taldor’s Blackwood Swamp, just north of Cassomir, that may date back to the time of the ancient Azlanti Empire. The Azlanti civilization effectively ended when a swarm of meteors descended on our planet in an event known as Earthfall. These ruins were likely built by Azlanti who survived the event, and are possibly 6,000 years old, or older."
“Rain chartered a vessel from here to the Taldan port city of Cassomir. He was to check in at the Three-Legged Frog, an inn in the city’s Imperial Naval Shipyards district. From there, he was going to have a guide lead him into the adjacent Blackwood Swamp to start searching for the ruins. We haven’t heard back since he left.”
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Hanu wanders aimlessly for days collecting flowers and assembling wreaths which he wears across his head, arm bands, and ankles. He returns smelling positive floral - indeed - perhaps the sweetest aroma you have ever encountered from a humanoid.
”Fire swamp, I believe. Lost quickly we may find ourselves. Quick is the sand. Of the wetlands of Cassomir: Beware!” he warns the group.
He listens intently to Rain’s journey, expressing a worried face after hearing about his apparent disappearance. “Lost in the swamp” he thinks to himself privately “We will find him”!
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Absently partially drawing his katana, sliding it back into its sheath, blue eyes staring blankly at a spot in front of him, Otani Yoshitsugu patiently awaits the arrival of the Masters.
At their entrance, the Oracle stands straight. The Tengu listens intently to the debrief. At the conclusion, he salutes smartly.
Consider it done!
"If you have no more questions, you should leave now." Marcos tells them.
Kreighton Shaine passes them a sack containing 36 gold pieces.
"This currency is to be used to arrange travel to Cassomir, with any leftovers to be used only for acquiring information on Rain in Cloudy Day’s location. You can’t use personal gold for these purposes, as part of your mission is to succeed using only the funds provided to you. Head down to the Docks district and charter yourselves a boat for the trip to Cassomir. When you get back, the Society has a vessel already chartered for the return journey free of charge." he explains.
Kreighton provides the agents with a single wayfinder. You can use that as proof of your allegiance to Pathfinder Society and as a tool for exploring the wilds."
Sorrina provides the agents with three minor healing potions. Marcos pulls out an everburning torch from his array of equipment and slides it across the table. The Master of Swords then jovially tosses two lesser antidotes to them. "Catch!"
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Hanu cartwheels into a leap and catches the vials middair before tumbling into a somersault to land.
He then hands the vials of Lesser Antidote to Moist and Zepth, one each.
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Olegaro has been listening attentively through the briefing, his kit resting on the floor beside his chair.
"Right, I think I've seen this fungus leshy around the campus. So we travel to Cassomir, track down Rain and if possible help him complete his mission. Got it! Thank-you for the supplies, let's get on our way."
and with a grin at Hanu's magnificent catch, Olegaro will take one of the potions, get up, shoulder his pack and head for the door.
"Nice reflex you have there! Haha!" he laughs jovially.
"Okay, you can go now."
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Following their briefing, the Pathfinders make their way to the Docks District of Absalom, where they’ll need to secure travel to Cassomir. Luckily for them, there are plenty of notices and criers at the Docks, all informing crowds of open spaces onboard vessels set to travel across the Inner Sea region and beyond.
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Looking very much at home at the Absolom Docks, Olegaro will ask around for ships going to Cassomir in the next few days. He'll be being strategic about it, seeking out a few key people like the Harbour Master's assistant, members of the Pilot's Union, or some of the more senior members of Lifter's Mooring (the dock and warehouse workers union). That way he can get an idea of the ships' reputations as well as the usual spiel of the criers.
Olegaro, under an hour of asking around on information, easily finds ships that they can choose from. They have three options:
A rickety vessel of questionable quality, the Opportune survives by traveling between Inner Sea ports and regularly making patchwork repairs on its hull.
"You want the fastest ride to Cassomir? This is your opportunity to hop aboard on Opportune at the cheapest price! Don't be fooled by its looks because my vessel has traveled a lot more than every ship here!" its male dwarf Captain Oderon Payne advertises the lower costs of travel on his vessel and boasts of its speed. "We can reach Cassomir in just four days!" he declares to Olegaro.
The Powerful Hector is a large wooden barge named after the father of its current captain, Eduard Tabrin. Olegaro learns that the vessel has basic amenities, including three square meals a day, along with shared lodging for the agents. It can make the journey to Cassomir in 6 days.
The costliest of the available vessels, the Mimosa is a powerful sailing vessel originally constructed in the dockyards of Detmer in the nation of Druma. It is captained by Javinda, a chatty Kellid who enjoys catering to her passengers’ every need. Its polished whitewood hull glints with golden filigree, and serving staff make the fast voyage comfortable and relaxing.
"We have parties onboard of which you can relax and socialize with our loyal nobles and other wealthy individual across the Inner Sea region. In just four days we will arrive in Cassomir." the captain shares with him.
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Olegaro will relay the information about the ships.
Conferring with the party, he will comment "I'm not the best judge of ships, but the pilots had nothing good to say on the Opportune and said they'd be running their own lifeboat beside it when they take it out of the harbor! So if we are in a rush I'd prefer the Mimosa. But the Powerful Hector sounds just fine to me, so that would be my vote."
The Pathfinders hop aboard the Powerful Hector ship to bring them to Cassomir. The Powerful Hector is a large wooden barge named after the father of its current captain, Eduard Tabrin. The vessel has basic amenities, including three square meals a day, along with shared lodging for the agents. It makes the journey to Cassomir in 6 days.
Their journey is without major issues, and they finally reach the bustling port city of Cassomir at night. Emerging into the Imperial Naval Shipyards district, they don’t lose much time before searching out Rain in Cloudy Day’s last known position: the Three-Legged Frog inn. The inn is close to its landing point and is notable for a sign swaying in the wind that depicts a frog standing up on two hind legs while drool from its mouth acts as a third leg to keep the frog’s balance. Inside the Three-Legged Frog, they are welcomed by a woman innkeeper.
"Welcome and good evening, weary travelers! How may I be of assistance?"
The innkeeper checks their logbook and finds the same name. "It looks like he stayed here like thirteen days ago. Unfortunately, I was on a break when your friend visited the inn. It is my husband's handwriting here. If you want, my husband will be back for the shift later and you can talk to him, perhaps he knows more about your friend's visit. But if you can't wait, you can ask around outside."
"If you prefer something more moderate, we have comfortable rooms with hearty meals, 25 silver pieces per person per night. Not as fancy, but you'll be well-rested and well-fed." she continues.
"Or, if you are on a tight budget, there is a basic hostel nearby. I think they offer their rooms for 1 gold piece per person per night."
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I've never seen a frog drool like that!
Rybar doesn't look at Moist, but says loudly enough for him to hear "Oh but I have. Every night before we go to bed, I see one drooling away. It's a happy sight!"
He runs outside before the Grippli can get to him, a wide grin on his face.
"Hey there. Have you seen a mushroom-looking Leshy that goes by the name of Rain in Cloud Day?" He asks as he passes by people on the smaller roads.
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Olegaro will reply to the innkeeper, "Thank-you, yes it would be good to speak with your husband then and find out if he knows more. Oh and we need somewhere to stay ourselves - do you have any rooms available."
After the short discussion, and chuckling quietly at Rybar's joke, he'll pop out and join Rybar in asking around
Between chatting with the locals, Olegaro will discuss the important business with the group "So we have a choice of rooms. If we have to only use the society funds then we can't afford the really nice one. I like the idea of well rested and well fed so should we get one here at the Frog, at least for tonight?"
Rybar, Olegaro, and Otani learn that Rain in Cloudy Day showed up late due to bad weather and had to pay increased costs at the inn as a result. Desperate citizens stole his provisions and the pack mule that he’d stabled at the Three-Legged Frog inn. No one else has seen him since he went to meet his guide.
When the woman's husband returns for the shift at the inn after a few hours, he confirms that Rain in Cloudy Day did arrive, albeit late. A day after Rain arrived, he set out into the Blackwood Swamp, and he hasn’t been seen for nearly two weeks.